Disk Utility : Partition / Raid or Raid / Partition ?

I have two external USB drives that I'm attempting to set up using Disk Utility.
I'd like to create either
- one RAID1 set with two partitions, or
- two RAID1 sets with one partition
however I'm not having much luck with either option. Is either scenario possible?

After some experimentation, I seem to have come up with a kludge ...
Partition both disks into identical volumes (A1 = B1, A2 = B2)
Using Disk Utility :
- create RAID Set 1 ( A1 + B1 = RAID1)
- create RAID Set 1 ( A2 + B2 = RAID2)
Error message 'Creating RAID set failed'
Restart ...
Using Disk Utility :
- click on partition A2 (now renamed RAID Slice)
- Erase partition
Upon erasing the partition / RAID slice will remount and the Disk Utility should show two RAID sets. A cursory examination of each RAID set's behavior leads me to believe it is simply a bug in Disk Utility that prevents the creation of two RAID sets on the same disk pair.

Similar Messages

Disk utility can't repair a partition on external hard drive

I have a 1TB Western Digital external FW drive that's only a couple years old (2 or 3, probably). I have it split into partitions, one of which I'm using for Time Machine. The non-Time Machine partition checked out fine with DIsk Utility, but when I ran Disk Utility on the Time Machine partition, I received this message:
Disk Utility stopped reparing "Time Machine." Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Does this mean the drive itself is failing? I erased the Time Machine partition and recreated it through Disk Utility, and then I verified it. Everything checked out okay, but I want to make sure, especially since I'm hosting my iTunes music in the other partition (it's backed up to a 2nd external drive, so if the drive does die, at least I don't lose everything).
Before this problem happened, both partitions dropped off the Finder and the light on the drive went off. I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in again a couple times, but nothing happened. Finally, the light went back on after plugging it back in for the 3rd or 4th time, but I'm wondering if the drive could be going bad, which would surprise me since it isn't very old.

Brad Cook wrote:
Disk Utility stopped reparing "Time Machine." Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Does this mean the drive itself is failing?
Possibly, but not necessarily. The File System on the disk was so badly corrupted that Disk Utility couldn't fix it. That might indicate a problem with the drive. It's not unusual for consumer-quality (ie, inexpensive) drives to fail after 2-3 years, although many will run for several years. It's a bit of a crapshoot.
Before this problem happened, both partitions dropped off the Finder and the light on the drive went off.
Whatever caused that is another good possibility -- if a drive is improperly disconnected, OSX can't "close it out" properly, and that can cause damage to the file system. Sometimes Disk Utility can fix it, sometimes it can't. And sometimes heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair apps like DiskWarrior can fix things Disk Utility can't.
A power dip or spike could have caused it, or an overheated electronic component, etc. If it has it's own power supply, be sure it's on a good (ie, not cheap) surge protector or U.P.S. system.
Otherwise, keep an eye on it. If you don't have "secondary" backups, this would be an excellent time to get another drive for that purpose. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for some suggestions.
Bottom line: personally, I'd not trust my only backups to that drive.
(But then, I'd never trust my backups to any single drive, no matter how new or high-quality.)

Disk Utility: MediaKit reports no such partition

What is up with my disk?
On my brand new mac mini, I played around with resizing partitions in Disk Utility, it worked fine, and I eventually returned it to the original single-partition state.
Then, I ran boot camp, and told it to create a 10 GB partition.
Then, I installed Linux (64-bit Ubuntu) -- from the Linux installer I deleted the windows partition, and a zero-size partition before it, and put Linux swap and ext3 partitions in that space.
Now, from the mac side, if I try to shrink the boot partition again, I get the error "MediaKit reports no such partition".
Help? One potentially related anomaly is that Disk Utility shows my Linux ext3 partition format as "MS-DOS (FAT)" but the "fdisk" command correctly lists it as "Linux files*"
Another disturbing thing is that if I type "sudo pdisk" on the Macintosh command line, and give the 'L' command to list partitions on all disks, pdisk exits with the error "Floating point exception"
Here's the log from Disk Utility:
2007-11-04 00:09:19 -0400: Disk Utility started.
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Preparing to partition disk: “Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 Media”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: 3 volumes will be created
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 1
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “Macintosh HD”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 90.1 GB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 2
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “Linux Swap”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 488.3 MB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 3
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “DISK0S4”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 10.2 GB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT32)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Modifying partition map.
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition failed for disk Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 Media MediaKit reports no such partition.
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400: Partition complete.
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400: Error with partition: MediaKit reports no such partition.

It doesn't sound like you've actually tried reformatting the entire drive, just resizing partitions. There is absolutely no reason why mountability should enter into the picture at all since you can't format a drive if any volumes are mounted.

Can I use the Leopard Disk Utility to repair a Tiger partition?

I have a multi-partition external disk, one partition has Tiger installed on it, while others have Leopard. (I used Leopard to partition the drive and then used SuperDuper! to copy my earlier Tiger backup from another disk to this disk.) Now I find I have errors on the partition with Tiger. Can I use the Disk Utility tool from my Leopard install to repair the Tiger partition? Earlier today I tried to boot from my Tiger install DVD and use the Disk Utility there to repair the partition, but it just hangs up and won't go forward.
thanks,
Chris Altwegg

You could use it, but if Tiger's Disk Utility couldn't fix it, it's doubtful Leopard's would fix it as well. You're better off using Disk Warrior from Alsoft.com.

Disk Utility will not format/erase/partition an unformatted scsi disk

Well, I'm back with a RAID problem again. This time the powers that be sent me a Sun Microsystems StorEDGE A5200 RAID box (22 33gig disks). It's a fibre channel system, and is full of Seagate FC disks. The box only hooks up to my G5 Quad via the Apple Fibre channel card that I have hooked up. It's a dual channel card and both are plugged into the back of the RAID array.
Now, here's what I have.....
The Drives show up in both Disk Utility and Anubis
The is only one drive formatted and it works fine.
All the rest of the drives are unformatted (not just blank, but without any operating system on them, just like they were fresh out of the box)
Attempting to Erase a disk results in the message
Disk erase failed
Disk erase failed with the error:
Invalid Argument
Attempting to Partition a disk results in the message
Partition failed with the error:
Invalid Argument
Attempting to create a RAID set results in the message
Creating RAID set failed with the error:
Could not add a RAID disk to a RAID. (note there was no other RAID set)
Only one disk in the array is formatted and it will respond to all of the functions in Disk Utility.
I was told that I needed to do something using the command line, but that was pretty vague as to what I needed to do. Apparently I need some sort of superuser authority to get these drives formatted, and that's it's not documented any where.
So folks, I leave it up to you again, what do I do?

OK, I have found out much in the last few weeks.
1 - Apple no longer supports SCSI, you may not format disks in any way using OS X. OS 9 also does not work on any of the G5 machines at least.
2 - You can use Linux to do most of the work with SCSI, it is still supported, although there is little clear documentation on how to get it done. Linux is free and works very well with my G5 Quad. But it has a steep learning curve and it's not worth it for just formatting SCSI drives.
What I found out about my SCSI drives turned out to be the core of all the problems I have had, and it was Linux that found the problem. Seems all of the drives I have but one have been formatted in such a way that only the proprietary operating system that formatted them would read them. 520k data blocks. I reformatted several of the drives to 256k blocks and they work fine now.
Before I go out and start going though this for a few hundred more of these drives, my academic supplier found just as many drives that were specifically formatted for use in Sun RAIDs and are properly recognized by OS X, and with twice the drive space (current is 36gig, new ones are 73gig). He is sending me 44 of them (and a second RAID box)
I'm hoping that this finally solves the problem and hope all will be working soon.

Disk utility Q: setting up RAID with 2 firewire drives

Hi,
I tried setting up a redundant RAID with two LaCie 250gb firewire drives in Apple's Disk Utility. All was OK until I restarted. The RAID didn't show up, and both disks came up as unreadable. I was unable to reformat, erase, repair, or partition either of the LaCie drives. I tried new cables and both the front and rear Firewire ports. No matter what I did, I got an input/output error.
I was able to erase and reformat one of the drives on my powerbook running 4.6. The other drive appears to be DOA, as it clicks and blinks and does little else.
So what gives? I'm going to exchange the dead drive, but I don't want to have the same problem with setting up a RAID if the same nonsense is going to happen again. Any thoughts?

FW RAID on G5s is PITA and very poor performance. You would also need a PCI FW800 controller to get a boost or anything like normal. If you want any type of RAID, invest in Serial ATA drive/case/controller.
SeriTek if you want it to be bootable. SeriTek or Sonnet for direct connect. Sonnet if you think you might need more than 4 drives and use Port Multiplier.
There is only one FW channel that has to be shared if you don't invest in one or more FW800 controllers.
My bet is the drive could be fine but needs to be zeroed and could have damaged boot blocks at this point.
I am not a fan of mirrors. Backups, yes, lots. Stripped for scratch and even a dedicated boot OS/apps, yes. I've run with Disk Utility and SoftRAID (3.5) for 4 yrs now but mostly SCSI and one FW800 RAID which only gets about 75-80MB/sec. Even a single drive gets near 60MB/sec and a mirror would cut that in half.

Disk Utility restore on a RAID is extremely slow

here is my story: i want to replace old internal 250gb hdd with 2х500gb striped raid set.
i have 2 G5 Powermacs, so i put 2х500 in one of them and build striped raid. then i booted it in target disk mode and connected via firewire to other G5. other G5 was booted from system dvd. i launched disk utility and choose restore from old 250 hd to new raid set. there are 100 gb of data on 250 hdd.
for now this process goes about 5 hours, and blue line is just on a half. is it normal when i restore a single partition on a raid, or something is wrong? why it's sooo slow?

No, changing/adding them to a Raid will lose all info.
Haven't actually tried it on a Concantated RAID, but I still suspect the Directory structure to be so different that it will wipe any info.
Only way is to backup everthing on the HD then move it back after it's setup for RAID.
RAID is really nice for the speed,but boy is it ever unreliable, of all the RAID setups I've had, the longest one went before going bonkers is 6 months, most far less. Never rovered one of them either.

Disk Utility unable to format or partition external HD

Last weekend I bought Leopard and prepared everything in my iMac (PowerPC G5, 2.0 GHz) to install it. One of the things I tried was to repartition an external USB hard drive (Iomega 120 GB P/N: DHD120-C) for use with Time Machine. This drive was already formatted with HFS+ but I noticed that was using MBR, and I understand that for use with Time Machine you have to connect a disk using Apple Partition Scheme. Well, I used Disk Utility (still on Mac OS X 10.4.10), selected Partition, Options, Apple Partition Scheme instead of Master Boot Record and tried to apply changes to the drive. Disk Utility froze, I left it for more than one hour until I had to force quit it.
When my iMac rebooted an screen appeared saying that I had a drive not recognized and gave me the option to initialize it. A second failed attempt, Disk Utility froze again.
Finally, I decided to move to Leopard and try to fix the problem later. Everything went fine and while I was waiting I used a Windows machine to partition my external USB disk drive (used DISKPART to create a primary partition) and formatted it with NTFS because Windows told me that the drive was too large to use FAT32. In Leopard, I connected the drive, it mounted OK and used disk utility again to try to repartition it using Apple Partition Scheme and Mac OS Plus (which I understand is the same than HFS+). Disk Utility froze again, more than a couple of hours later I had to force quit it and now I'm using MacDrive in a Windows computer to format the drive, after creating again a primary partition using DISKPART, it seems to work without issues, formatted it using HFS+ in less than a minute. For me, the drive is working fine.
I'll test it with my Leopard iMac later, I'm sure it will mount OK but I'm also pretty sure that it will be recognized as Master Boot Record, which most certainly will give me problems if I try to use it with Time Machine (or not?). Can anybody please explain me what's happening between my iMac and the external hard drive?
Thanks in advance.

As expected, the disk formatted with MacDrive was recognized OK by my iMac. As soon as I connected it Time Machine offered to use it, I accepted and my first backup completed some time last night (I left it working and went to sleep).
Any ideas about what could be happening with the hard drive?

Disk utility-erasing a HD, creating partition map hanging

Hi all,
I have been given an external Maxtor USB drive, 120 BG, with the need to securely wipe the old information on it. I have used Disk Utility, and zeroed the HD with a 7 times pass. This took 17 hours, and it moved to the "create partition map" stage. It's been doing that for 24 hours and still the progress bar is rolling. All other options are greyed out and nothing can be selected in Disk Utility. I have chosen to format it in Mac OS X Extended, Journaled. There was about 45 GB data on the drive.
Would this amount of time be expected, or has something gone wrong? I hesitate to force quit DU, in case I render the drive unusable. If I do that or shut down the computer, what's likely to happen to the HD? Will I be able to mount it again and start over. Any tips much appreciated.
Frances

Hi Frances,
17 hours for the 7-times pass is normal (and usually completely unnecessary unless you work for the CIA). However, the hang at the "create partition map" stage is not normal. I would interrupt it and reformat the drive, since the zeroing is finished anyway.
If this answered your question please consider granting some stars: Why reward points?

Disk Utility won't resize a partition

Disk Utility won't resize (eliminate smaller partition from a 2-partitioned internal) Hard Drive. This is the message I get:
"Partition failed
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled."
Help files offer no information on this error. I followed the Help instructions to do this operation, but the resize doesn't work. The older, smaller partition shows up in Disk Utility but is dimmed out. It will activate at highlight, but is not recognized on the desktop.
Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?

Intel based Macs use a different partition scheme called GPL or GUID rather than what PowerPC used, APL.
You could try reformatting, or get a new system, and run BootCamp and Windows even.
Even if you've used Macs for years, there is always a place on my book shelf for this one, David Pogue's "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (Leopard Edition)"
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/02/27/1551206.shtml

Disk Utility stopped repairing "disk1s2"-a partition from an external hard disk

I bought a new Seagate Go Flex Desk 2TB exernal HD.Three days ago one of the three partitions(1.7TB) on this HD stopped working,when i tried to repair the volume in Disk Utility it stoped repairing, showing the following message-
Verify and Repair volume “disk1s2”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
The volume could not be repaired.
Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Now the problem is after starting it only shows the other two partitions,in Disk Utility the problematic volume no longer bears the name given by me and shows 'disk1s2' in dimmed letters. I had some nessesary piece of data in that volume.My question is-
1.Is there any oter software that i can try to fix with?
2.If i reformat the disk and ceate the partition again would it work smoothly?
3.there were power cut off 7-8 times when using the HD,if it's the reason ten why the other two partitions are working properly?One of these volumes used to contain Time Machine Back-up.
Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

I have (kind of) a simmilar problem with yours, does DiskWarrior really helped?? Since it's not free, is there any other program that might helped ???

Disk utility doesn't allow to partition

when I pressing the button "apply" it sends this error what's wrong?

Unfortunately, your computer's age has nothing to do with a disk failure.
Take no offense, but you seem to know little about computers and Mac, and I'm curious of why you wish to partition your disk. Usually, only advanced users need other partitions, for very specific use. You NEVER partition your disk for the pleasure, or just because someone told you to do so. You need to know exactly what you want to do.
Anyway, as CSound1, Eric Root and el_mancebo said, you need to :
1- check your disk health. To do so :
- boot in recovery mode (+R or ALT on boot)
- go to disk utility
- choose your disk
- in SOS tab, repair permissions and repair disk
2- backup your stuff (always in recovery) :
- get an external disk (blank and bigger than the datas on your disk, for instance, if you have 310GB used on your hard disk, your need a 320 GB external disk at least)
- go to disk utility
- choose your hard disk
- go to Restore tab
- choose your hard disk as Source, your external disk as Destination and click on Restaure.
BEWARE : you need a blank external disk, as it will wipe out all datas on this disk
When everything above is done, and only at that moment (or you may lose everything on your computer),
3- partition your disk (recovery mode) :
- go to disk utility
- choose not your system disk, but the physical hard disk (1st line, with a name dispalying disk capacity, name the manufacturer gave to it, and "Media"
- go to Partition tab
- choose how you want to partition your disk
Afterwards, you may need to recover your backup.

Disk Utility locks when trying to partition

Well, I'm in a right pickle at the moment. I decided to reinstall Mac OS X on my PowerBook. For some reason, when starting Disk Utility from the OS X DVD 1, it just says 'Gathering disk information...' with the spinning icon. Still no luck. Then, after restarting, nothing happens. Just the old OS 9 icon saying it can't find the System Folder.
I then tried to install Ubuntu Linux which worked perfectly. I tried the Hardware Test CD which worked fine as well and said everything was OK. I then tried to reinstall OS X but without luck. Disk Utility just hangs....
I'm off on holiday in 48 hours so I need this machine fixed. Any ideas? I have an iPod and another Mac (good ol' Mini) so I thought I could do something with this. I backed up the machine so everything is safe but I just need to install OS X on it. So, how can I fully restore the disk back to normal?
Thanks
Seb

Are you sure you made the partition HFS+? You need to make sure that the partition is compatible with being a system disk.
Are you using the disks that originally came with the computer. If you use disks from another machine, the installer may refuse to install. If you have a retail version, you might have problems if the retail version is older than the computer you are trying to install on. Even though the retail versions of the OS should work on a variety of machines, it may not be compatible with computers that are newer, even though installing and applying software update should get you to the version you needed. Apple doesn't anticipate you using retail disks on a machine that came with the same version bundled with it.

Disk Utility won't add new partition

I have an external 250GB hard drive connected via USB to my Mac Mini (Early 2009) computer. The drive has a GUID partition table that was created using Windows Vista SP 1. The first partition on the disk is a 128MB Microsoft Reserved partition. The second partition is a 120GB NTFS partition. When I try to use Disk Utility to partition the remaining 112GB of space as a Mac OS Extended Journaled partition I keep getting an error message stating "MediaKit reports no such partition". How do I get around this bug in Apple's Disk Utility application?

techguy378,
As they always do, Microsoft has undoubtedly created "their own" proprietary implementation of the GUID partition table. The effect, in this particular case, is that Disk Utility cannot see that unused space. That doesn't mean this is a Disk Utility "bug."
If one were to do the same thing with Disk Utility- create 2 partitions on a drive that do not fill the drive- that empty space would be included in the partition map. Simple. In your case, however, it appears that Vista has just excluded that empty space from the map entirely. Neat trick, huh?
I think your only solution will be to add a partition in Vista, if that is possible without destroying the current volumes. You can then reformat the new partition in Disk Utility.
Scott

Disk utility can't verify/repair partition map.

When trying to verify/repair my hdd it gives me the error: "Error: Couldn’t find the target disk for this operation."

You should already have a Recovery HD that was created when you installed Lion or came with the computer pre-installed. The Recovery Disk Assistant simply makes a Recovery HD you can use if one is missing from the hard drive.
However, repartitioning will destroy all the data on the drive so you will have to reinstall Lion. It will also remove the Recovery HD from the drive, so you will need to use your flash drive Recovery HD to boot the computer and get to the recovery main menu. The essential process:
Install or Reinstall Lion from Scratch
If possible backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
You will need to use the OPTION boot method to select your recovery flash drive as the boot volume.
Repartition the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Select one partition from the Partition Scheme dropdown menu. Click on the Options button and set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
When the destination drive is displayed click on the Display Other Drives button and select your internal hard drive as the target.

Disk Utility doesn't erase a partition...

Hi.
I know, there are many topics about partitioning and BootCamp, but none could help me so far...
I just tried to install Windows 7 on my iMac...I got the black screen, now I found the solution on the AppleSupport page, but that's not the point.
Since I couldn't use the Windows Partition, I tried to erase it with BootCamp. It said that after the repartitioning, the size my Macintosh HD would have been 465 GB (it was 500 at the beginning) so it was deleting Windows, but not resizing the partition.
So I tried to initialize with Disk Utility, and I ended up with a partition initialized in HFS+, but that I cannot edit.
I'd like to erase it and get free space, in order to expand my Mac OS X partition, but for some reason I can't.
I even downloaded the Demo of Drive Genius, and it says that that partition is "read only" so it cannnot erase it.
How can I get my 40GB back??

You blew whatever chance you had.
And no, using Boot Camp Assistant, which is correct way to remove it, does not "return" all the space in every case. Some is "lost."
Using DU though your only choice is to delete the volume you created and go from there, and try to extend.
But never work without a safety net, a backup or two.
You don't need DG3. It is good to have Disk Warrior. But your issue is with the partition tables, and not a file system error. iPartition might. But in reality, SuperDuper is your best bet: clone your system and reformat your drive (booted from your clone) and do a restore.
Try again with Disk Utility to remove the space.

Disk Utility : Partition / Raid or Raid / Partition ?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for